


The Ghosts Between Us

by usuallysunny



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of past Jon/Daenerys, Mentions of past Jon/Ygritte - Freeform, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26013616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usuallysunny/pseuds/usuallysunny
Summary: It's easier than it ought to be, falling into Val's arms, into her bed.Broken and still burning from the pain of war, Jon leads the wildlings home and finds comfort with their princess.It's not love—but it's something.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Val
Comments: 13
Kudos: 74





	The Ghosts Between Us

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the showverse but pretending that Jon had known Val before. I've interwoven some quotes from the books, hope you enjoy!

It’s easier than it ought to be, falling into Val’s bed.

After-all, he told himself he would never be here. Not necessarily _here,_ wrapped up in another wildling’s furs, but in a woman’s arms again. He had been here twice before. Two women he’d had, fierce and strong in their own right, and two women he’d lost.

He closes his eyes as Val’s warm mouth skims his jaw. He wonders how she’s so warm when the bite of winter still rages outside the tent. Sometimes it’s so cold, he can feel the wind whistling hollowly through his bones. She seems unaffected.

_“I am no southron lady…”_ she had quipped once before, _“…but a woman of the free folk.”_

He struggles to pinpoint when she’d said it. The days and nights and months and years tend to bleed into one. Perhaps it is his trauma, the way his blood still sings with death and war, but he finds the concept of time a difficult one.

As Val’s still-warm mouth moves to his throat now, sucking a bloom into the skin, his eyes find the small slit of the slightly open tent. He can see Tormund trying to spark a fire in the distance. One more flick of the sticks and there’s a triumphant laugh as the flames roar to life. Jon watches them dance, red and wild and free, and thinks of Ygritte. His eyes shift to the sky then, to the moonglow that bathes Tormund and his friends in soft, silver light, and he thinks of Daenerys.

“Get out of your head, King Crow,” Val is muttering into the hollow of his throat, “you think too much.”

A hum rolls from Jon’s chest.

It is not something he is often accused of.

He doesn’t want to think; he doesn’t want to talk.

He wraps a hand in her loose hair, dark honey strands slipping through his fingers, and drags her to him.

“Don’t call me that,” he mutters against her mouth. He twists them. She’s strong, but he’s stronger, and then he’s cradled between her open thighs.

She’s undeterred—bright, wild, untamed.

“It’s what you are.”

“ _Was_ ,” he corrects because he’s nothing now. Yes, he’s returned to the Nightswatch and yes, he still shouldn’t be here, but he’s not much of anything anymore.

_What sort of man kills the woman he loves_? His gut churns with guilt again.

“And ever shall be."

He touches his forehead to hers, frustrated.

“Ygritte was a fool to believe she'd turned you,” she says. Her voice is blunt but her tone isn’t particularly unkind. Val _is_ blunt, direct and candid.

He’s in her bed now because he wants to be. She didn’t seduce him or try to persuade him, like Ygritte did. She didn’t ask him to stay or come to him the night after, like Daenerys did. She takes what she wants when she wants it and she won't beg for him.

He shouldn’t want it, is a man of the Night’s Watch again—vows that had rung hollow, but vows nonetheless.

But he is still a man, he admits, as Val’s hand wraps around his swollen cock.

His length fills with blood, pulsing and hard and throbbing under her touch.

He is still a wolf, he thinks, as he nips at her sharp jaw.

“Don’t talk about her,” he orders gruffly.

To his dismay, Val laughs.

It’s a small and musical and _lovely_ sound. Back when he met her all those years ago, he remembers thinking it had been a long time since he had seen something so lovely. When he saw her again, his mind still fogged with war, she had smiled at him like an old friend and the same thought had burned through his mind.

_Lovely._ She was lovely and lonely and lethal—still.

Her next laugh bleeds into a moan as Jon slips his fingers between her thighs. It’s the only way to shut her up, the only time her control slips, and his thumb rubs heated circles on her clit.

Her back arches into the furs, her thighs trembling under his ministrations as he slips two fingers inside her, stretching her and preparing her for him.

It’s a game and she pushes right back.

“I suppose you don’t want me to talk about your kneeler queen either,” she gasps as he crooks the fingers in a come-hither motion.

The words make him pause, a sharp pain stabbing at his chest. It feels like a dagger. The symbolism isn’t lost on him.

“ _Please_ ,” he chokes out.

He’s unsure what he’s begging for—but Val relents.

“You don’t want to speak,” she whispers, not a question but a fact, and her voice is thick with desire, “put your mouth on me then, Jon Snow.”

He does.

He can tell another quip about Ygritte burns on her tongue. His first love would always wax poetic about _that thing he does with his tongue._ She had done it in-front of him more than once, making him blush, and Val had always looked vaguely interested. She doesn’t have to wonder about it anymore, about his skill, because he’s more than happy to oblige.

She tastes hot and sweet, her nectar like honey, like her hair, as it floods his tongue. She always tells him to fuck her like a wolf and so he laps at her, his strong hands keeping her thighs spread for him. Her thighs tremble around his head, her hips rolling and searching for friction.

She’s unashamed about her pleasure, always has been. She fucks his mouth, her fingers curling through his hair and forcing his head where she wants him. He hears himself release a thick growl into her cunt, more wolf than man, and he latches his mouth to her clit and sucks hard.

She shudders, her mouth falling open and a loud moan ripping from her throat.

“Quiet,” he husks into her thigh, the grit of his beard sliding over her pale skin.

It’ll leave a mark, a rash, come morning.

His mouth and beard are soaked with her and when he flicks her clit and she shatters, he swallows the wetness that gushes from her. He groans, his cock hard as Valyrian steel, as she shudders in the afterglow.

He sits up, his jaw aching, and lets his dark eyes flit over her.

She’s a vision—all milky skin and soft curves against bear furs. Her skin is flushed with a thin sheen of sweat, her dusky rose nipples erect. He can see the evidence of his work between her lazily spread thighs, the silver shine of sweat and saliva and cum.

She’s lovely and beautiful and strong and he wants to tell her as much. The words lodge in his throat. She wouldn’t appreciate them, anyway. He’s no poet and she’s no southron lady. She has no interest in the perfumed lords of the south and though he’s from Winterfell, he’ll always be a southerner to her.

So he covers her with his body instead.

She kisses him, her mouth sweet and soft. She likes to taste herself on his tongue, tart and tangy. It arouses her, sparks her lust. Sometimes she kisses him like she means it. She snakes a hand between their bodies and drags his length inside her.

Her breath hitches at the contact, so does his, and then he’s fucking her in shallow thrusts.

He holds onto her and she holds on right back.

“Harder,” she grunts, _demands._ Her nails dig into the taut muscles of his shoulder blades and make him hiss. “Fuck me harder.”

He acquiesces with a snarl, his top lip curling as he hitches her thigh higher on his hip and increases the pace. The tent is filled with the lewd, wet sounds of their fucking as he builds her to a peak.

One time, one of the first times, he had gathered her hair in a ponytail and tugged while he pounded into her from behind. She’d egged him on with throaty moans, choked gasps, and when she’d smirked that he could imagine her hair with fire or moonglow in it if he wanted, he’d pushed her away in disgust.

He knows who she is. He knows who _he_ is and _where_ he is. He supposes in some ways he _is_ using her—for comfort, for relief—but he wouldn’t disrespect her like that.

He wouldn’t disrespect _them_ like that.

He loved them both, at different times in his life and in very different ways, but they were gone now.

Besides, Val’s using him too.

She seeks her own pleasure, squeezing him between her strong thighs and twisting them. Her lithe body rests on top now and she slides down onto him again.

He moans, his pupils blown to black and focused on where they join. She rides him hard and fast, every inch the wildling princess they call her, and when her pale eyes focus on his scars, he flinches.

“I can put a shirt on,” he mutters, his throat suddenly very dry.

Val laughs again, a small tinkling sound.

“Nonsense,” she breathes, her fingers splaying across his chest, “you’re a warrior.”

He huffs. He feels like a scared little boy.

“You _are,_ ” she rolls her eyes. She has little time for his brooding dramatics, "you’re strong and brave and _good…_ and you fuck like a king.”

He lets out a harsh exhale, his length hard and throbbing inside her. She’s so tight and hot and wet, he’s almost delirious.

_“You’re a proper lover, Jon Snow,”_ he hears Ygritte’s voice.

_“Lord Crow is welcome to steal into my bed any night he dares,”_ he hears Val’s, _“once he's been gelded, keeping those vows will come much easier for him.”_

She had laughed when he reminded her of that, smirking that she had a better use for him. 

The tip of her finger trails across his most painful scar. It’s all angry, raised skin, curving purple over his heart. He doesn’t remember much of what happened, only the last sharp stab. Olly’s blade, he thinks. Until the day Daenerys burned the city, he thought it was the most painful thing he would ever feel. 

Val fucks herself on him harder, her wet channel sliding up and down his cock. It brings him back to reality, _drags_ him back. He feels that hot coil of pleasure at the base of his spine. He needs to finish her off. He licks his thumb and places it between her legs, rubbing her clit as he fucks her from below.

She shivers, clamping her bottom lip between her teeth as she comes. Her cunt pulses and flutters around him, drawing out his own orgasm. He lifts her off him before he can come inside her, spilling hot and sticky and wet over his stomach. He won’t give her a child and she wouldn’t want one, too independent and free. It’s a small display of honour from a man who has none left.

She collapses onto the furs beside him, her breath falling in little pants.

“You should have stayed with us, Jon Snow,” she whispers after a while, breathing to life what he had often considered himself, “instead, you turned back and became a kneeler and it brought you nothing but pain.”

It had brought him more than that for a little while. A crown and a family and a woman he loved. His chest gives another painful lurch then as he thinks of Sansa. Of course he misses Bran and Arya too, but they’re far away, easier to forget for a little while. The fact that Sansa is in Winterfell sets his teeth on edge. She’s so close, he can practically _feel_ her—but he can’t get to her. In many ways, they had built a life together after the battle with Ramsay—a time when he was King and she was the defacto lady. He’s proud of her and a little resentful too, he hasn’t quite forgiven her, and all the conflicting emotions give him a headache.

But all in all, he supposes Val is right.

He’s where he wanted to be, free in the north, but he’s lost everything too. With the memory of his father ripped away from him, he doesn’t even know who he is. Half a wolf, half a dragon, never a whole of anything. He’s been dragged back from death, fought and fought again, and he wonders how far a person can bend before they break.

“You spent too much time with us, Jon Snow,” he murmurs what Tormund had said that day, “you can never be a kneeler again. Tormund said that.”

Val hums, twisting her tired body until she’s laying on him. Her blonde locks spread like summer rain across his chest.

“The oaf does have his moments,” she quips, “he's right, you know. You don’t belong down there. You’re not made for their southern games. You should be free.”

_"Build yourself a cabin and find a woman to lie with in the night,"_ the ghost whispers again.

Jon has affection for Val. He knows that she is strong and brave and wild—but he also knows that he is not in love with her.

He wonders why.

She is as fearless as Ygritte, perhaps more so, and certainly more mature. She is as smart as Daenerys and far more independent, relying on nothing and no-one.

And _yet_ —

What he feels for her is more of a dull ache, a feeling stuck deep within his chest. He can’t understand it. He can’t quite get to it. He thinks if Val were to leave him, to never sneak below his furs again or steal away with another man, he could walk away from it, relatively unscathed. He thinks perhaps his capacity to feel such things, love and possession and passion, has long been burned out of him. 

He knows she wouldn’t be offended. She doesn’t love him either, though perhaps she is slightly more possessive. She likes to claim him, to dig her nails into his chest, to scrape at his neck with her teeth, to mark him like Ghost might mark a mate. Her closeness to Ghost unsettles him. Sometimes, when his wolf emerges from the cold lake and stands next to her, his fur dripping and his paws padding wetly on the snow, Jon is struck by a strange thought— _they look as though they belong together._

“Thank you, Val,” he murmurs then, his fingers stroking through her hair, “for everything.”

For her warmth, her friendship, her very unique sort of kindness.

She makes him forget for a little while, the ghosts of the women who died in his arms.

“Don’t get all sentimental on me,” she orders dryly, “we wouldn’t want your fragile heart to break again when I grow tired of you and steal into another man’s bed.”

His mouth twitches under his beard. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s close.

“Alright,” he whispers.

Really, he doesn’t think she would. He thinks she’s as eager for him as he is for her.

It’s not quite love, he thinks, as moonlight streams in through the tent—but it’s something.

**Author's Note:**

> Never written Jon with anyone other than Dany/Sansa, but our boy deserves some love :( can you imagine how traumatised he must be after all the shit he's been through?


End file.
